Untitled [seated female nude] 1955 - 1967

Richard Diebenkorn made this drawing of a seated female nude on paper with charcoal. You can see the making so clearly, right? The way the lines aren’t perfectly continuous, but broken and searching. It feels like a process of feeling out the form, rather than just copying what’s there. There’s such a tactile quality to charcoal, isn't there? You can almost feel the give and take of the stick against the paper. Look at how Diebenkorn uses smudging to create areas of shadow and volume, like around the figure's legs. It’s kind of amazing how a few simple lines and smudges can create such a sense of depth. Then notice how this is interrupted by hard lines. Diebenkorn reminds me a little of Matisse in his approach to line and form, that real sense of immediacy. But there’s also something uniquely Diebenkorn about the way he balances abstraction and representation, and just leaves it hanging there, unresolved. Art isn’t about answers, it’s about the questions.